Understanding And Capturing The Antecedents And Outcomes Of Multi-homing On Mobile Social Apps

The burgeoning development of mobile telecommunication industry has shifted the conventional social activities to mobile platforms,leading to the blowout of diverse mobile social apps.As a result,mobile social apps have caught much attention from internet enterprises.Interestingly,instead of using one mobile social app,users tend to use multiple mobile social apps simultaneously.In other words,users are multi-homing on mobile social apps.The phenomenon has been followed by both practitioners and scholars,and multi-homing is likely to increase competition among mobile social apps because users have to allocate the limited time and attention to multiple apps.In order to give a deep understanding on users' multi-homing on mobile social apps,two studies have been conducted in this research.Study 1 establishes the utility model of users through the lens of rational person hypothesis,and explores the interdependence effects between mobile social apps.Based on dual system theory,study 2 explores the underlying mechanism of multi-homing behavior.The main results are given as follows.First,users' multi-homing behavior on mobile social apps will do a favor for enterprises.Second,past multi-homing behavior has a positive effect on future multi-homing behavior.Third,information complementarity is the most vital predictor on future multi-homing behavior.Fourth,as the equally important system and thinking mode,non-conscious process and conscious process coexist and both of them have an effect on future multi-homing behavior.Last but not the least,multi-homing behavior would induce social overload,and then induce information overload.This research brings innovative insights into multi-homing,and provides the new theoretical lens for future research.Additionally,the results of the study help internet enterprises understand the antecedents and outcomes of users' multi-homing behavior.Furthermore,the more effective design and operation strategy will be given,and the research also indicates that the win-win cooperation strategy is more beneficial.